Geoffrey Rush and Kaya Scodelario represent different threads in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” the fifth in the franchise, something of the passing of the baton.

“I saw the first ‘Pirates’ as this great ride with a nice trajectory where I die in the end, and it was great working with Johnny Depp,” says Rush, an Oscar, Emmy and Tony winner.

Turns out that audiences enjoyed his character of Captain Hector Barbossa, the nemesis of Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, so much that with a little magic they brought him back for the sequel. Barbossa has appeared in all the films since, but never more so than in “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” opening Friday.

New to the cast is Scodelario, who plays Carina Smyth, an orphan, astronomer and a horologist (yes, the pirates think it means something else other than one who constructs clocks). The now 25-year-old actress is also primarily the only woman in the male-dominated story.

“They never made me feel like the only woman. They didn’t censor themselves,” says the actress known for the British Series “Skins” and “The Maze Runner” franchise. “We were there to do a job, and everyone brought their ‘A’ game.”

In fact, the six-month shoot in 2015 was like a series of acting lessons for her.

“Where else are you going to get the opportunity to watch Javier Bardem live in front of you?” she asks.

The Oscar-winning actor of “No Country for Old Men” plays the Spanish pirate hunter Captain Salazar, the villain in the film and the ghost leader of a cursed crew.

At first, Scodelario thought she might be a bit intimidated by Depp but found him encouraging.

“Because he is so committed to doing that character you really believe that you’re on a Caribbean island with a drunk pirate,” she observes.

“Dead Men Tell No Tales” was originally set to be released last year by Disney, but franchise producer Jerry Bruckheimer says that the studio was too backed up with other franchises – movies from Marvel, “Star Wars” and Pixar – that the film was delayed until this summer.

Besides Scodelario, the other primary new face is Brenton Thwaites as Henry Turner, son of the first trilogy’s Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley). Will is searching for the mythical Trident of Poseidon as a way to free his father, doomed to living in Davy Jones’ locker.

Carina believes in science, not witchcraft, but is searching to fulfill her own destiny, although she doesn’t know what that is exactly. She possesses a book left to her by her unknown father that may yield a clue as to who he is.

“I didn’t want to play the love interest. I didn’t want to play the damsel in distress,” states Scodelario, who had signed on even before the script was finished.

So she called for some assurances from the directors, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, who received an Oscar foreign-language nomination for 2012’s “Kon-Tiki.”

“I told them I wanted Carina to be a well-rounded female: that she’s got heart, she’s got soul and that she can have her own journey,” Scodelario says.

The actress has had an interesting career journey herself. Raised in London by her Brazilian mother, she grew up in working-class conditions.

“In England, there is this tradition of the upper classes going to very expensive drama schools, and then going on having careers,” she says. “I knew that wasn’t an option for me. My mother would never have been able to afford that.”

Scodelario says she was very shy and insecure. “I was bullied; I was kind of a girl in the corner. So acting was a great outlet for me by pretending to be someone else.”

After being transferred to a new school to escape bullying, she heard about an open audition for a TV show about teenagers.

“They didn’t want to get 27-year-olds playing 16,” she says. “They wanted to find real kids going through these experiences.”

Though she went to the audition, she stood outside, too nervous to go in. Then the show’s co-creator Bryan Elsley spotted her and asked her to try out. Scodelario did a 10-minute improvised audition and got the role of Effy, the cool girl, the opposite of who she was in real life.

“I got incredibly lucky, and you have to be if you want to be quite successful,” says Scodelario, who is married to actor Benjamin Walker and mother of an infant son.

In “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” it’s Carina’s and Barbossa’s fates that are entwined. The actress says she was really surprised how forthcoming Rush was with his time. “He’s had such a long career, and in doing these movies for 13 years you would think by that he knows Barbossa and he knows what to do.”

Yet Scodelario notes that they met three or four times before the shoot. “There is so much action and so many storylines that we wanted to make sure we made the most of our scenes.”

Bruckheimer says Rush is constantly inhabiting the character and always coming up with ideas, but the actor says the film wasn’t the only thing he had on his mind.

The actor mentions that at the same time he was filming “Dead Men Tell No Tales” in Australia, he was also learning the title role in “King Lear” for a production of the Shakespeare play in Sydney later that year.

“So there I was in my board shorts walking up and down the beach on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which curious enough is my old child family holiday stomping ground. Throwing ‘Lear’ in the mix while I was shooting ‘Pirates’ while having childhood memories was a heavy time.”

Still, he found it “quite a nice balance … shooting CGI by day and by night plunging back into the power language written 400 years ago.”

Acting is acting for him, no matter what the circumstances.

“Basically, the key scenes of these films have dialogue. It’s no different than doing an independent film where I’m sitting in a room with Colin Firth chatting about his stutter,” he says, referring to “The King’s Speech,” which he produced and for which he received an Oscar nomination. “The bottom line for me is how can you apply the best imaginative, hopefully original, non-stereotypical approaches to storytelling.”

Rush, 65, can also be seen in National Geographic’s first scripted series, “Genius,” as the older version of Albert Einstein.

The actor says he hasn’t worked out what Barbossa and Einstein have in common.

“There has to be some ego all, and there has to be some solitude,” he muses.

He recently signed up for “Storm Boy” – a combination of live action and 3-D CGI animation – in which he plays the adult version of the title character, who recounts his childhood adventures to his troubled teenage granddaughter.

“It’s about passing on the baton of knowledge from one generation to the next so we just connect and stop reinventing the wheel every time,” Rush says. “My kids are now in the 20s, and I always say to them, you own the 21st century. This is your time. Make the best of it. Dickens said it was the best of times and the worst of times. It always is. It’s a great dialect.”

Rob Lowman began at the L.A. Daily News working in editing positions on the news side, including working on Page 1 the day the L.A. Riots began in 1992. In 1993, he made the move to features, and in 1995 became the Entertainment Editor for 15 years. He returned to writing full time in 2010. Throughout his career he has interviewed a wide range of celebrities in the arts. The list includes the likes of Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood to Kristin Stewart and Emma Stone in Hollywood; classical figures like Yo Yo Ma and Gustavo Dudamel to pop stars like Norah Jones, Milly Cyrus and Madonna; and authors such as Joseph Heller, John Irving and Lee Child. Rob has covered theater, dance and the fine arts as well as reviewing film, TV and stage. He has also covered award shows and written news stories related to the entertainment business. A longtime resident of Santa Clarita, Rob is still working on his first more-than-30-year marriage, has three grown children (all with master's degrees) and five guitars.

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